In a previous blog post, I told you about Riz Ahmed. About a bar in West London. About a conversation that changed the trajectory of a life. I asked you who your Idris was — who it was that stood in front of you at the edge of your own possibility and refused to let you walk away from it.
Today I am answering that question myself.
Because this post is mine. This is my story. And I am going to tell it as honestly as I know how — because I think the most powerful thing I can do for you is not just share the highlight. It is share the darkness that came before it. The limiting beliefs. The closed doors I built with my own hands. And the slow, sometimes painful, sometimes exhilarating journey from a woman who couldn’t see the light at the end of the tunnel — to a woman who decided to build her own.
This is how I bet on myself. And this — this — is investing differently.
THE DARKNESS: WHEN THE DREAM FELT LIKE IT BELONGED TO SOMEONE ELSE
It started with a book.
I was reading the story of Arlan Hamilton — the woman who built Backstage Capital, her own investment firm, from nothing. And I remember sitting with that book and feeling two things at the same time: inspired and completely shut out.
Because as I read, the thoughts came flooding in. And they were not kind.
I am not a U.S. citizen. I do not live in that country. I do not have those kinds of opportunities. Those stories are not for someone like me.
I even went to her website. There was an option to invest — but you had to be an American citizen. And I remember closing that tab and feeling something heavy settle over me. I listened to Serena Williams too. I saw these extraordinary Black women doing extraordinary things. And I felt the pull of their stories. But I also saw a flag that was not mine. A country that had built an entire infrastructure — an entire ecosystem — that made those stories possible.
And I was not in that ecosystem.
So, I went looking. I searched for investment opportunities in Africa. I looked online, trying to find something — anything — I could be part of. But everything I found required capital I didn’t have, or citizenship I didn’t hold, or connections I hadn’t built. And with every closed door, the voice inside me got a little louder.
This is not for you. You are too far away. You don’t have enough. You are not enough.
I was in a dark place. Not dramatically dark — not the kind of dark that announces itself. The quiet kind. The kind where you are perfectly functional on the outside and completely stuck on the inside. I could not see the light at the end of the tunnel. I could not even see the tunnel.
And here is what I know now that I didn’t know then: I was not investing in myself. I was investing — every single day, with every thought — in my own impossibility. I was compounding my limitations instead of my potential. And it was costing me everything.
THE SHIFT: CHOOSING A NEW WORD, CHOOSING A NEW WORLD
That year, I chose a word.
Wealthy.
Not as a destination. Not as a number. As an intention. As a declaration that something in me was ready to expand — even if I didn’t yet know how, or where, or in which direction.
And I got to work. Not on the money first — on the mind. Because I had learned, the hard way, that you cannot build a wealthy life from a broke mindset. I read books. I took courses. I joined a membership focused entirely on money mindset. I started doing the slow, unglamorous, invisible work of dismantling the beliefs that had been quietly running my life.
And something began to shift.
Not overnight. Not dramatically. But the way the light shifts in a room when someone quietly opens a window — you don’t always notice the exact moment it happens. You just realize, at some point, that you can see more clearly than you could before.
I started asking different questions. Instead of why won’t this work for me, I started asking how can I make this work with what I have, where I am, in my environment, in my reality? That single shift — from why not to how — is one of the most powerful investments I have ever made. It cost nothing. And it changed everything.
THE SEED: A COMMUNITY, A CONVERSATION, AN IMPOSSIBLE IDEA
Around that time, I was part of a tontine — a community savings group. Together, over ten months, we brought together almost $50,000. And I remember sitting with that number and thinking — there is something here.
What if instead of each of us taking the money monthly, we pooled it? What if we invested it together in something that could really grow into something bigger?
And then — quietly, almost shyly, like it didn’t want to be laughed at — a thought arrived.
What if I started my own investment company?
I want to be honest with you about how that felt. It felt insane. My mind genuinely could not process it. I, Salima — who sat on the floor of a shared apartment wondering how people-built wealth. I, who had closed a tab because I wasn’t an American citizen. I, who had spent years compounding my own impossibility — was going to start an investment company?
But here is what I have learned about seeds: you do not need to understand them to plant them. You just need to not bury them.
So, I held the thought. I let it sit. I let it breathe. And slowly — very slowly — it started to take root.
THE BET: ELEVEN PEOPLE, ONE DREAM
I started approaching people. Members of the tontine. My siblings. My nephews. I shared the idea — not as a polished pitch, not with a business plan or a legal structure or any of the things you think you need before you begin. Just the idea. Just the vision. Just the belief that together, we could do something none of us could do alone.
Some were immediately interested. Some were hesitant. A few were not interested at all. And I made a decision that I think was one of the wisest of this entire journey: I did not try to convince the people who weren’t ready. I did not waste energy pulling people toward a dream they couldn’t yet see. I focused on the ones who could.
In October, we started. Eleven members. A minimum contribution of $250 each per month — more if your means allowed. No legal structure yet — just family, just trust, just a shared belief that this was possible.
We were not a company yet. We were a conviction.
THE PROOF: WHERE THE DREAM BECAME REAL
And then — the opportunity arrived.
I came across a community of investors looking for members to join them on a two-year project. The model was clear: pool resources, buy land, build a house, sell it, share the profits. Real estate development. Tangible. Structured. Real.
And we joined them. Not as individuals. As a company.
Eleven people who started with a conversation. Who started with $250 a month and a dream that felt too big to say out loud. We walked into that opportunity not as separate people hoping for a chance — but as a group. As something we had built together.
I cannot fully wrap my head around it even as I say it. Because I remember who I was when I first read Arlan Hamilton’s story. I remember the tab I closed. I remember the voice that said this is not for you.
And I want to tell that version of myself — and I want to tell you — that the opportunities were never only in America. They were never only for people with the right passport or the right connections or the right amount of money already in the bank. They were here. They were possible. They just required a different kind of seeing.
They required me to stop looking at what existed and start imagining what I could create.
That is investing differently. That is what this podcast season is about.
Salima
Just me thinking out loud overe here